Jo Hardy

Jo trained as a nurse at Poole General Hospital, before working at Hinchingbrook Hospital in Cambridge. She has spent six seasons in the Antarctic for both the British Antarctic Survey and the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, with a variety of role including surveyor’s assistant, waste management operator, environmental clean-up manager and Antarctic Heritage Site guide. Jo is an advanced skier and has spent a lot of time ski mountaineering throughout the Alps, North America and Greenland, both professionally and for sheer fun. In 1998, she made an unsupported crossing of the East-West Traverse of the Greenland Ice Cap, a 350-mile polar journey with skis and kites. A keen sailor, she has sailed across the Atlantic with Brian Newham, her partner of 28 years, as part of a three-man crossing and has also sailed to Alaska, Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland and around the Mediterranean and Caribbean. She is also a keen cyclist, having completed Land’s End to J, doing the Three Peaks on route. Her role to date with The Coldest Journey has been heading up the team preparing the expedition food, a mammoth task which has involved individually weighing out and packing around 2,000 meals. During the start and end of the expedition Jo will be environmental officer on board the SA Agulh